1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and an apparatus for controlling power of an electronic device, and more particularly, to a method of controlling on/off of a core based on a used amount of a core and the number of tasks in an electronic device having a multi-core, and an apparatus thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the significant development of information, communication and semiconductor technologies, the supply and use of portable terminals have rapidly increased. The portable terminal provides various functions such as a call function, a music playback function, a character message transmission/reception function, a digital broadcasting/receiving function, a near field wireless communication function, and an Internet connection function. A user may install various additional applications in a portable terminal.
To provision the various functions in a mobile terminal, a portable terminal using a multi-core instead of a single-core has been recently developed. A portable terminal using a multi-core has a faster processing speed but also a greater power consumption. That is, the portable terminal including the multi-core reacts with great sensitivity in power consumption. Because the size of a battery is restricted in a compact portable terminal, power consumption in the portable terminal having a multi-core is an important issue.
Accordingly, there is a need for a low power consumption design, for reducing power consumption of the multi-core while easily providing various applications in the portable terminal including the multi-core. However, the existing low power scheme applied to the multi-core environment to minimize power consumption of a multi-core processor is limited. Accordingly, there is a demand to correct and compensate the existing low power scheme to adequately meet the multi-core environment requirements.